Inspiration to learn about yourself

In 2007, TrygFonden donated 100,000 teddy bears to 39 hospitals across Denmark. Experience shows that teddy bears spread happiness to children, i.e. increase the value of the hospital product. What do hospitals in the country, you live in, do to cheer up children who come to the hospital to have an operation done?

"Die Kosten der Alters- und Pflegeheime sowie der Spitexdienste könnten von 7,3 Milliarden im Jahr 2005 auf rund 18 Milliarden im Jahr 2030 ansteigen. Der Kostenanstieg könnte gebremst werden, wenn sich beispielsweise der Gesundheitszustand dieser Bevölkerungsgruppe verbesserte." Source "Übergewicht haben in der Schweiz in den letzten 10 Jahren in der Bevölkerung stark zugenommen, besonders bei den Kindern. Es ist, wie auch im übrigen Teilen Europas, ein ernst zu nehmendes Problem." Source Investments need to be made to help/encourage people to continuously improve their own health. But which type of investments - and how? Following up on this posting suggesting that a great city has good conditions to work out, I’d like to mention zurichvitaparcours , a very interesting initiative by Zurich . At the vitaparcours located in several hundred locations throughout Switzerland, you can go for an open air workout. The photo below is from the vitaparcours in Langenthal ...

In this posting , I mentioned the initiative "Tag der offenen Tür", through which companies invite people to come and see where they work – thereby promoting dialogue even more. To get inspired even more, have a look at this good 4½ video:

To what degree are you asking questions? And to what degree are you encouraging other people, you work with, to ask questions? Get some inspiration for asking questions from this proverb .

"Very often the best way to test an idea is not to analyze it but to try it " , Paul Sloane writes in this eye-opening article . Which idea have you tried out lately – for example with your customers?

I read today, that Technorati is currently tracking 112.8 million blogs. It’s not only the hierarchical companies that I wrote about in this posting , which can benefit by using blogs to communicate. I believe that a wide variety of different companies in many different industries will gain an advantage by using blogs. For example, blogs make it possible for people to - independent of time and place - communicate with, for example, customers, as well as with other people across the company’s functions and hierarchies. If you haven’t yet asked the manager of the company/companies, you work for, to write a blog, how about trying it?

I came across the 1 minute movie below through TED . I think it’s quite an interesting idea that a choir in one country sings another country’s national anthem. As described on YouTube in the text about the movie, I think this initiative has potential to change the way we think about other countries. Apart from the French choir featured in the movie below singing the national anthem of the United States, you can see and hear Kenya sing for India here , and/or listen to Japan singing for Turkey here .